


I Pine for You, I Even Balsam

by blackrabbit42



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Mute!Jensen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 00:45:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrabbit42/pseuds/blackrabbit42
Summary: Written for spn_masquerade for skeletncloset's prompt: Jensen is unable to talk for whatever reason. He has a HUGE crush on his neighbor, so Jensen proceeds to leaved embroidered pillows on Jared’s doorstep (think dirty Charlotte’s Web). Jared has no idea who his secret admirer is. Thanks for the awesome prompt bb!





	I Pine for You, I Even Balsam

Jensen’s fingers tremble at first, but the repetition of the work soothes him as he continues his task.  Poke the needle in, catch it on the other side pull the string through, aim blindly with his mind’s eye and poke the needle back up through, catch the shining point and pull until the skein of brightly colored thread was visible again.  Repeat.  Repeat, Repeat.  
  
He lets the sound the thread makes pulling against the cotton work through his nerves.  He counts the stitches, mentally adding up and comparing the number of stitches per letter.  Comparing how much he has completed to what he has left to do.  Calculates the proportion of the largest letter (K) to the smallest letter (i).  Anything to keep his mind off the word he’s stitching.  Anything to avoid picturing doing that word to his neighbor.  
  
Because leaving embroidered pillows on his neighbor’s doorstep is admittedly, crazy, but getting up the courage to approach him personally, to go through the social dances necessary to accomplish what he wanted is, for Jensen anyway, impossible.  
  
See?  He’s thinking about it again.  His hands shake and he misses his mark, piercing his thumb with the sharp tip of the needle.  He jerks his hand away from the work, because god forbid he gets blood on the damn thing and has to start over again.  
  
Hydrogen peroxide.  For his thumb  _and_ for the needle.  A neat, perpendicular line of bacitracin on the pad of the bandaid. It takes three bandaids to get it right so the ends overlap perfectly.  
  
Okay.  He can do this.  All he has to do is not think about how Jared is so tall that he, Jensen, might have to stand on tiptoes to kiss him.  Not think about how, if he were standing on his tiptoes, he might be a little unsteady on his feet and Jared would have to put his hands on his, Jensen’s, waist to stabilize him.  And how if Jared’s hands were on his waist, they might slide around to the back and then Jared might accidentally fuck him right there in the hallway.  
  
Wait.  Okay, maybe that’s getting a little ahead of the game, considering they have never spoken.   _Way_ ahead of the game, considering that Jensen  _can’t_ speak, and therefore will never be kissing or fucking Jared, accidentally or otherwise.  
  
Deep breaths.  Deep breaths.  He breathes in, imagining the smell of rosemary and balsam, breathes out, imagining what Jared’s breath might feel like on the back of his neck at night— No!  Damnit.  Breathe in, balsam, breathe out, mint.  Breathe in, lavender, breathe out, chamomile.  Spell chamomile with the next nine breaths.  Notice how chamomile has a palindrome in the middle.  How balsam is the first word in that set of herbs if you arrange them all in alphabetical order.  
  
It’s only stitches.  One stitch at a time.  Don’t think about what it adds up to.  
  
He returns to bed, back up against the headboard and resumes work.  He’s nearly done.  He’s tallied up the number of stitches required and it’s a prime number, which is both agitating and soothing at the same time. Agitating because the fractions that represent his progress can’t be reduced: forty-eight one hundred and elevenths, forty-nine one hundred and elevenths, so on.  Soothing because when he’s done, one hundred eleven one hundred elevenths reduces to one.  All those ones, all those straight lines.  You could write out 111/111 = 1 without one single curved line.  
  
He’s just finishing the last “S”, when it starts.  Jared came home about half an hour after Jensen did, and for a while, Jensen couldn’t hear anything. Now, through the thin walls, Jensen hears the headboard in Jared’s room hit the wall. This only happens when Jared is sitting up in bed, rather than laying down to go to sleep.  And Jared only sits up in bed for one reason.  Jensen knows.  He’s been listening for a long time now.  Sixty-two days since Jared moved in next door, Fifty-eight days since Jensen moved his bed up against that same wall.  
  
Jensen freezes.  Then thinks better and puts the needle, thread and cloth down.  He’s going to need his hands.  There’s just enough time to unbutton his jeans and yank up his t-shirt before Jared starts getting warmed up, his breaths coming out in erratic gasps as if he forgets to breathe for a few strokes.  Jensen pulls out his own cock, tries to synch his strokes with Jared’s gasps.  
  
When Jared’s breathing turns into moans, Jensen throws his head back in a silent scream, his throat working soundlessly around air. His hips raise up off the mattress, his free hand clutching spasmodically at the sheets.  
  
When he’s done, there’s no relief, because  _Jared_ isn’t done.  Now the moans are punctuated with taps of the headboard on the wall, and each one nails Jensen right in the groin.  He finds he’s not done after all.  
  
It’s so easy.  In his minds eye, they’re doing it  _together_.  He can’t even look a barista in the eye when he pushes his hand-written order across the counter, but he can masturbate with Jared.  If only he could somehow work out all the things he would need to do to  _get_  to that point, he  _knows_  it would be good.  
  
If only there were some way to… Then, like tumblers falling into a lock, it hits him.  He glances at the clock quickly.  Nine thirty-eight.  His internal clock, which is extremely reliable, if he does say so himself, tells him that three minutes and forty two seconds have passed since Jared came.  And even if he’s off by a minute or so, it’s not likely that  _Jared_ would have looked at the clock the moment he came.  But what if he did?  Shit.  What if Jared’s clock runs a few minutes off?  Not everyone checks the NIST website every morning.  
  
Deep breaths.  He has to accept there are some things he cannot control.  What he can control, however is stitches.  He can make perfectly even stitches.  He riffles through the bedclothes and finds the piece he’d been working on and casts it into the trash.  That word isn’t what he wants, not by a long shot.  
  
One at a time.  Little red lengths of scarlet, each precisely three millimeters.  The perfection of his idea is so satisfying that he achieves all one hundred and fourteen stitches without stopping once to count.  After that, it’s just a matter of using his machine to attach a backing, and then he can fill it and be done.  
  
++++++++  
  
When Jensen departs for work the next morning, he leaves the pillow in front of Jared’s door, oriented so that when Jared opens the door, the red “9:34” will be properly legible.  
  
++++++++  
  
Then, three days later, “8:42.”  
  
The day after that, “9:16.”  
  
“7:58”  
  
Then a terribly distressing “11:57.”  All the other times had been even numbers.  
  
However, as agitating as that number is, Jensen has a good feeling about it, because Jared is smart.  He works in the IT department at Brigham and Young for pete’s sake.  That number is going to be the one that sets off the light bulb.  
  
Jensen calls in a personal day and starts working on the next pillow right away.  
  
When Jared gets home from work, he’s going to find a new pillow with “7:00” written on it.  
  
++++++++  
  
Jensen can hardly breathe.  Despite how confident he’s felt all along, from the moment he heard Jared’s key in the door his heart rate started racing, and spelling all the herbs in the world isn’t helping.  He’s displaying tics he hasn’t had in years.  He’s counting his blinks.  He blinks an extra time if he needs to even things out.  But then he’ll go and blink involuntarily and ruin the whole thing.  He’s turned all the cans and boxes in his cabinet so the labels face the right way.  He does the pre-rinse, brush, floss, second brush post rinse routine, then decides he needs a new toothbrush, and repeats the whole thing again, just in case.  
  
Jared made some sort of Thai dish for dinner.  Jensen heard the chopping, can smell the lemongrass, ginger, cilantro.  For a while, repeating the word “cilantro” in his head helps, but then all he can think of is how Jared is over there, casually throwing together a dinner, humming to himself like there’s  _nothing_  out of the ordinary, and Jensen is torn between the certainty that Jared doesn’t “get” it, and the more likely certainty that he  _does_  get it, and to him, it’s just an interesting game and it’s just not fair that Jared can be over there living his  _life_  while Jensen is over here, checking the expiration dates on all the first aid supplies in his closet.  
  
Deep breaths.  Only eighteen more minutes until 7:00.  Less if Jared’s clock runs fast.  He tries not to think of the other logical concession; that it might be more if Jared’s clock runs slow.  Deep breaths.  Fourteen minutes.  
  
That would be enough time to do his oral hygiene routine again.  Under the right conditions, bacteria multiply and double in number every twenty minutes.  That means any bacteria that he missed an hour ago have multiplied to eight times their original number. No.  He knows what he needs to do.  He’s got one shot at not completely fucking this up, so he needs to use some of his damn strategies.  
  
Twelve minutes.  He goes and sits on his bed, back up against the headboard, and already feels calmer. Instead of fighting the thoughts in his head, he goes with them.  Pictures Jared untying the string of his pajama bottoms; the grey flannel ones Jensen’s seen in the dryer in the laundry room.  Thinks about how long and slender Jared’s fingers are.  Tries to picture what they must look like wrapped around his cock.  Nine minutes.  
  
Deep breaths.  There’s lube in his nightstand.  The sheets are clean. The apartment is clean.  He’s got several options for breakfast.  Everything is perfect, just in case.  Then an amazing thought strikes him;   _Jared_  isn’t perfect.  Jensen knows this because Jared sometimes stops and gets his mail out of his box on the way up to his apartment, and sometimes he doesn’t.  Because even though most of the time, his satchel is zipped up all the way, it isn’t always.  Because the satchel is equally likely to be carried on either of Jared’s lovely, lovely broad shoulders, even though it would be less cumbersome to carry it on the left to give his right arm more mobility.  
  
Which all means that it will  _be all right_  if Jensen’s forgot something, or miscalculated something, or  _anything._  
  
Seven min— the bed in the room behind him creaks, and Jensen hears the tell-tale tap of the headboard against the wall.  He glances as the clock in confusion.  Surely Jared’s clock can’t be  _that_ far off, could it?  And then it hits him.  All the times he’d quoted.  Those were the times that Jared  _came._ Not when Jared started jacking off.  Which means.  Jesus.  Jared is going to try and come for him  _on demand_ , at a particular time.  He’d made a mistake, and look, Jared was making it into something better, by far.  
  
Jensen closes his eyes against the sudden rush of dizziness that sweeps over him; the effect of all the blood in his brain heading south without so much as saying goodbye.  
  
It doesn’t take Jared long to get really fired up, and Jensen can’t say that he blames him.  He  _knows_  they are sitting back to back, hands on their respective cocks.  Jensen hears Jared’s tempo quicken, then stop abruptly with a sudden intake of breath, then it’s quiet for a few moments until it starts up again.  
  
Jensen’s right there with him.  He’s got to hold back several times, pulling his hand off quickly, breathing through it, willing his dick to behave, spelling words backwards in his head until he can touch himself again without coming.  
  
Until.  
  
The clock ticks over to 6:59.  Jensen’s a sweaty, heaving mess.  Every time he strokes, his body tenses and his cock leaks precum.  He thunks his head back against the headboard, biting his lip.  The noises behind him make it impossible to distract himself, he’s going to come, he’s going to come, he’s going to—  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Jared gasps out from the other side of the wall.  Jensen’s mouth falls open and, had he any viable vocal chords, the sound that would have come out would have been a plea for mercy.  He holds the base of his cock, not daring to move a single muscle fiber.  His mental clock ticks down the last minute while he breathes through the spasms that threaten to push him over the edge.  Behind him, Jared is crying out, louder than Jensen has ever heard him, right up until the ten second mark, then a pause filled only with the sound of hands on skin and a startling crash of Jared’s headboard against the wall.  
  
Then, right as the digital clicks over to 7:00, Jared comes.  The noises Jared makes unhinge Jensen, and he wraps his fist around his cock and strokes it quickly once, twice, and then he’s coming as well, spraying hot and wet up onto his chest, his mouth straining to make a sound it’s never been able to make.  
  
He slides down, off of the headboard, until he’s lying prone on the mattress, catching his breath.  He trails his fingers absently through the pearly mess on his chest, loving this brief period, as always, when he’s free from caring about the mess, or germs, or whether he’d forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste.  It’s—  
  
The door to his apartment opens, and Jared walks in.  He’s in Jensen’s bedroom and crawling up on the bed before Jensen can even process what the hell is happening.  
  
It only takes a moment to realize two things at once.  First, that Jared is a filthy kisser, mouth all over the place, not particularly caring if his tongue is licking the inside of Jensen’s mouth or running along the edge of Jensen’s jaw.  Second, that Jared is fucking  _huge._ All over.  His body is heavy on top of Jensen’s, his hands span the whole of Jensen’s skull- thumbs on his jaw, fingers splayed out, and fucked-up-Freud-on-a-freight-train, his cock, holy shit, his cock.  Jensen can feel it grinding up against his thigh, already hard again, working its way out of the fly of Jared’s ( _YES!_ ) grey flannel pajama bottoms.  
  
“How come you never said anything?” Jared is asking him.  “I’ve wanted you since the day I first saw you.  Why didn’t you…”  he pauses, shutting his eyes tight.  “Jesus, Jensen, let me put it in you.”  
  
In answer, Jensen paws at the nightstand with one hand, and opens his mouth wider, letting Jared lick in deep, so deep that Jensen gags.  When his hand blessedly finds the lube, and he gets two of his brain cells to cooperate and recall that he had lined the condoms up so that regular were to the left in the drawer and XL were to the right, he grabs what he needs and presses the supplies into Jared’s hand.  
  
Jared’s hips never stop moving, rutting his cock through the slick on Jensen’s chest as he sits back on his knees and puts on the condom.  “Let me see what you look like when you do it,” Jared says.  “Put your hand on yourself and show me what I couldn’t see before.”  
  
Jensen obeys, taking cock in hand and spreading his knees for Jared, who reaches down and presses two lubed fingers against Jensen’s hole.  For a moment, Jensen’s body resists, because he’s doing everything he can to hold himself together.  If he relaxes even a bit, he’s going to—  
  
Jared pushes in anyway, his long, slender fingers finding just the right spot immediately, and smiles crookedly when Jensen loses it and sprays come all over his chest for the second time in—Jensen doesn’t even know how long, and that’s saying something, he literally has never lost track of his internal clock in all of his memory.  And he doesn’t care.  Every muscle, every nerve, every cell in his body is completely out of his control, and it’s good.  He’s still coming when Jared nudges the head of his cock against the empty place where his fingers just withdrew.  
  
“Deep breath, Jensen, you can do this,” Jared says.  
  
Yes.  Breathing. That would probably be good.  But damn.  It occurs to him that had he gone the normal way about this, and he and Jared had gotten to know each other a bit first, then Jared might know he was a virgin.  As it stands, he just has to trust Jared and hope for the best.  
  
Turns out, the best was something mind-numbingly awesome.  Something close enough to pain to make Jensen almost panic, but not quite.  Jared keeps up a steady stream of “that’s it, open up for me” and “it’s okay, I got you” until he’s finally eased in all the way, and then he stills, eyes closed and forehead pressed to Jensen’s.  “You ready?” he asks, and Jensen’s not sure, because he’s stretched so tight and it’s so intense and he doesn’t know what to do with his body.  But then Jared gives him another “It’s okay,”, and starts kissing his forehead and Jensen feels the head of Jared’s cock slide slowly back over his prostate and he nods his head, fuck yes, he’s ready.  
  
He spreads his knees as wide as he can and reaches around Jared’s waist, thumbs locking on his hip bones, and pulls him back in.  Jared groans, and Jensen cants his hips up, pulling Jared deeper.  
  
“Fuck, Jensen, that’s not fair. That’s so… I’m gonna come.  I’m—”  
  
Jensen smiles.  Jared doesn’t need to tell him he’s going to come, Jensen has heard him do it enough times to recognize when it’s about to happen.  Besides which fact, Jared drives into him so deep, stretches him so wide, there really can be no doubt.  He’s sure he’s going to be feeling this three weeks from now, but damn, for now it feels so, so good.  
  
Jared rolls onto his side, fitting one arm beneath Jensen as his spent cock pulls out.  Jensen doesn’t watch to see what Jared does with the condom, which is in itself, a major breakthrough for him.  Trusting that either Jared will figure out something reasonable, or that the world won’t end if he doesn’t.  That’s a mighty fine feeling for someone like him.  
  
“Wish you’d said something sooner,” Jared murmurs into his ear.  He takes Jensen’s earlobe n his teeth and tugs gently.  
  
Jensen had put a notepad and paper in the drawer near the condoms and lube, but his arm is trapped between Jared’s neck and shoulder on that side, so he signs “I can’t speak,” figuring that although Jared probably doesn’t know sign language, he’ll at least get the hint.  
  
“But you can’t be deaf, you heard me through the wall.”  Jared frowns in puzzlement then props himself up on one elbow, scrutinizing Jensen’s face.  
  
Jensen shakes his head.  Points to his mouth and shakes his head.  Points to his ear and gives a thumbs-up weakly with his free hand.  
  
Jared’s eyes widen in comprehension, then smiles.  “Thank goodness, I was starting to get a complex every time you passed me without saying anything.”  
  
Jensen would like to be honest and tell Jared right up front that it’s more than just his vocal chords.  That even if he had been physically capable of speech, he probably still wouldn’t have been able to speak to him.  But Jared just looked at one of his faults and actually said the words “thank goodness.”  
  
For Jensen, that’s enough for now.


End file.
